The Birth of Poppy

After a month of persistent contractions that kept coming back even with medication, I went to my hospital's Women's Evaluation Unit on a Monday night to be monitored. I was checked by different doctors. The first found my cervix to be closed. The second, a couple of hours later, found me to be 3.5 cm dilated. The third confirmed the 3.5 reading. I was immediately hooked up to an IV with a low dose of magnesium sulfate, and also administered the first of two doses of the steroid for Poppy's lungs.


Monday night at the WE-U. Looking good.

I felt fine for most of Tuesday, but the contractions kept coming, so the doctors increased the magnesium dosage to the maximum level they could give. I was starting to get "maggy," meaning I had a hard time moving, walking, or seeing straight. Tuesday night I was given the second dose of lung steroids. By Wednesday, I was a mess. I called myself a "lump on a log" because it was so hard to lift even my arm out of the bed. I was definitely a fall hazard and needed help accessing the bedside commode.

Even with the magnesium, I was still contracting. They were getting more painful, too. Whenever a contraction hit, I would flap my feet up and down to deal with it. That was the only thing I could do. My husband thought it was adorable, but I wanted to be more in control of my labor. I asked the nurses to please stop the magnesium. I had already heard the doctors hinting at delivery, since baby's lungs were primed and there was nothing more they could do to stop it. The nurses checked with the doctors, and by the afternoon I was taken off the Magnesium. I immediately felt so much better. Within an hour I was bouncing through the contractions on an exercise ball, finally able to manage my pain the way that I wanted to, instead of just "lying there and taking it." The nurses had a copy of my birth plan in front of them, so they knew better than to offer me an epidural.


Bouncing through a contraction.

My Mom had flown up from Florida and was able to be there on Wednesday. She and Senpai would chat about the news or any random thing Senpai found while surfing the internet (as he does), until I would start bouncing, and then I made it very clear that I wanted them to be quiet. I had the Tibetan Singing Bowl music playing that I listened to when I had labored with Rosemary.


Mom giving me the pep talk.

I was allowed to have chicken broth and jello for dinner, yum! Diabetes comes in handy sometimes.  When the doctor stopped by my room that night, I asked if there was something he could give me that would help me sleep. Unlike my first birth experience, no one was in a rush to get this baby out of me anytime soon, and I foresaw a difficult delivery if I didn't conserve my strength and rest through the night. The doctor gave me Ambien. I slept well. Mom and Senpai stayed the night, too.

The next day, Thursday, was the big day. I started by bouncing on the ball until it offered no comfort, then I moved to the bed to thrash around, rock back and forth on my knees, and basically flail my way through the contractions. At 7 cms dilated, I took a hit of whatever opiate they're using in place of Stadol these days (I was told there's a national shortage on Stadol. Anyone know if that's true?). It wore off quick. By the time I was taken to the operating room, I was grabbing the hand rails on the bed and throwing my body from side to side.


Now it really hurts.

I had delivered Rosemary while under the influence of Stadol. It was very odd. I had no idea who all was in the operating room with us or who actually caught her. My memory is mostly of the darkness of the back of my eyelids in my drugged out haze, and then the feeling of her little 4 lb 13 oz body sliding out of me with minimal effort on my part. This delivery was much different. I was hoping to be more aware of the entire process, and I was since the opiate had long since worn off. It was too late in the game to add anymore pain meds into the mix, so it was just me and my body, about to do some hard work together. Everything-- my vision, my alertness, my pain-- was fresh and crisp. I started to push.

Nothing happened. Not at first, at least. The doctors needed more effort. More pushing, more pushing, oh my gosh, this hurts. This HUUUUUURTS. Rosemary was delivered free of pain, remember, and Poppy is a bigger baby. This was my first time experiencing the true pain of childbirth, the "ring of fire." The doctors offered to set up a mirror to show me the head crowning ("Maybe if you see it, it will give you something to push for,"), and that's when I realized that it was up to me. In spite of the room full of doctors, it was 100% up to me to push this baby out or else I would be rushed into an emergency c-section. I didn't want to get cut open, so push, girl, PUSH! The head came out. PUUUUSH! The shoulders came out. Poppy was born!


She was born into a sea of yellow.

I fell back against the bed with relief before I noticed something strange. The doctors didn't immediately take Poppy away like they did with Rosemary. No, they were just holding her between my legs and hanging out there. I wondered what they were doing until somebody commented, "I've never seen one pulse for so long!" That's when I realized that they were following my birth plan! With Poppy being premature, I had assumed that the birth plan would be thrown out the window for her safety. But I guess she was breathing well enough for several points to be implemented, like waiting for the umbilical cord to stop pulsing before cutting it. The doctors encouraged me to touch her while they still had her so close to me. I lightly ran my hands over her warm, sticky body and that moment meant so much to me. I touched Poppy seconds after she was born. It was three hours before I could touch Rosemary. Oh, it meant so much.

The cord eventually stopped pulsing, and the doctors took her to the other side of the room to get cleaned up. I was still on my high of being able to see and touch Poppy when an even more surprising thing happened: they gave her back to me! She was wrapped up in a blanket and wearing a hat-- not naked as I had asked in the birth plan-- but I got to hold her, I got to hold her! It was at least a day after Rosemary was born when I held her for the first time. This birth was so much better! I thanked myself over and over again in that moment for writing a birth plan. Rosemary and Poppy were both born at 33 weeks, both had the lung steroids, but Rosemary had been taken away from me so fast, while now I was having such precious moments with Poppy because the doctors knew I wanted them. Just to set something straight, I was going to write a birth plan for Rosemary's birth, only I hadn't known to expect her so early; she surprised us. When the early contractions started up with Poppy, I knew I had to be prepared.


One happy Mama.

It came time for the doctors to take her to the NICU. I was told I had slight tearing, but it wasn't bad enough to warrant stitches. I forget if this happened before or after I held Poppy, but the placenta was delivered and I saw it drop into a bucket (another fun memory I missed in my drug haze of Rosemary's birth). I was wheeled back to the room and saw Mom standing in the hallway (only one person was allowed in the operating room so I chose Senpai. Sorry, Mom). She told me she had seen Poppy on her way to the NICU. She also said she could hear me screaming through the delivery and Poppy crying when she came out. Haha, good to know the rest of the L&D ward could tell I was having a baby.

I went to see Poppy in the NICU as soon as I could.


7 lbs, 19 1/2" long. Born at 10:14 AM on 5/10/12.

The rest is another story.

Don't Come Early

"Senpai?" I tentatively ask from beneath the covers.

He pauses the tv show he is watching on his cell phone, "Yeah?"

"When Rosemary was born..." I start, and Senpai braces himself for what comes next, "Why did it take three hours for me to see her? Did I ask to see her as soon as I could, or could I have asked sooner?" Imagining the future brings up scars from the past.

He collects his thoughts, remembering, "They needed to do things to her in the NICU... they needed to monitor you. Three hours flew by. What do you think?"

"I remember time passing... the nurses weren't there and you called relatives. Could I have called the nurses in to take me to her?"

"You were out of it, Sweetie," he admonishes, and then calms my fears with a sentence, "You demanded to see your daughter."



Poppy, please stay in for as long as you can. I hope to curse myself at 41 weeks for saying this. Don't come early. I want to hold you in my arms seconds after you are born, instead of days. I want to touch you immediately, instead of three hours later, and I want to gaze at you for hours, instead of twenty minute brackets. Please, oh please, don't come early.

the NICU post

(Are you a new NICU parent? Read here for tips about what to do during your baby's NICU stay.)


I go more in detail into the birth in a previous post, but I'll start here with a quick recap: Rosemary was born at 33 weeks gestation. With the full moon, my body tried to push her out. The doctors were able to stop the contractions, but my liver fought back in the form of HELLP Syndrome, demanding that the baby get OUT. Start up the pitocin; my body couldn't handle being pregnant anymore. That's how my baby was born.

She had received the steroids for her lungs while she was still in utero, so she came out with a healthy cry. At least three of the many people in the operating room focused on her as soon as she came out. Is she breathing? How's her heartbeat? Any liquid in the lungs? Very fast-- within a couple of minutes-- she was cleaned up, wrapped up, and brought over to me (though still out of reach) to see that sweet, tiny face for all of one second. Just as fast as they brought her over they took her away, out of the room, down the hall, to NICU. Senpai asked if he could follow, and then my family was gone. Being left behind, without either my husband or newborn baby in the delivery room was an intensely lonely feeling that tasted bittersweet. My thoughts were along the lines of, "I carried this baby for seven months, I've been in pain for her, I just delivered her, and now... I can't see her." I clung to the image of her little red face, already fading in my memory, as I was taken back to my room and monitored by the nurses. She had been born at 9:29 pm. When I still hadn't seen her two hours later, I demanded to be taken to her. I touched my baby for the first time at 12:20 am.

First trip to the NICU.

Entering the NICU, it was so uniquely different from the rest of the hospital. People had to be buzzed in, signed in, watches and jewelry removed, and hands and arms scrubbed with disinfecting soap up to the elbow (I just remembered the smell of the soap). Children, the little germ harvesters that they are, were not allowed in. Parents and two family members (that you choose, but must specify on a form) were the only people allowed to see the baby, but only two at a time.

The NICU was divided into different sections with varying levels of care, labeled from A to G. Rosemary started out in an open bed in the last room, G. After the first night they then moved her to an incubator (they call them "isolettes" these days) against the wall to the right when you walked in the door. The first time I saw her in the NICU, she was on her stomach in her open bed, breathing with the help of a respirator tube. I wasn't worried. I knew she had received the steroids for her lungs, and I had heard her healthy cry after she had been delivered. I think I was also too tired to be worried. I was just so elated to finally see and touch the tiny 4 lb 13 oz little girl that had made my uterus her home for so long. I was taken back to my room after only about 20 minutes because I was starting to fall asleep in the wheelchair.



I was not one of those Moms who spends every minute in the NICU. I was still healing for one, very exhausted, trying to get my body's systems back to normal, and two, I believed that the doctors and nurses in the NICU were taking good care of my baby. She wasn't sick, she just wasn't meant to be out in the world yet. All she needed was to grow and learn how to eat, otherwise she was a healthy little camper. She would forget to breath sometimes, and for that she was put on a daily caffeine injection. I never saw her get stuck with anything. I would see the aftermath-- a new IV line in her head, little red spots on her hands-- but the nurses did the dirty work when the family wasn't around. I'm sure seeing her in pain would have broken my heart in two.



Senpai got to hold her first. I wasn't there to see it, but he came back to my room looking so excited. The first time I held her, maybe two days after she had been born, was so magical. She was itty bitty and warm, and red like a little lobster from the jaundice.



Under the bilirubin lights.

I think it was the fourth day when Senpai came back into my hospital room after visiting Rosemary in the NICU and said, "They want to start putting clothes on her." I looked over at the duffel bag we had packed with things from home, inside of which I knew was a teeny-tiny sweater I had crocheted while I was still pregnant. I had followed a pattern, but even with using a larger hook size the gauge came out incredibly small and the sweater looked like it could fit a doll. I had shaken my head at the microscopic sweater when it was completed, wondering how it would ever fit a full-term baby. There in my hospital room, I felt foolish all of a sudden for wanting to put it on her. Senpai had asked me before if he should bring it over to the NICU, but I hadn't wanted him to, I don't know why. It wasn't until the "order" as it were came down from the nurses that I knew she needed that sweater. We went right over, me clutching the smallest little sweater in the world, and miraculously, it fit her. That sweater I made was the first piece of clothing my baby ever wore. There was a matching hat, too, but it wouldn't fit over the IV line they had just put in her head.



The first way her Daddy and I got to care for her was to change her diaper. I don't know about Senpai, but I felt odd doing it at first, like it wasn't my place. I thought, "The nurses handle everything, feeding, diapering, changing bed linens, etc... Who am I to care for my baby? Wait, I'm her mother. I'm supposed to be doing this anyway. But she's in their charge; they make the important decisions, not I. Oh well, just change your baby's diaper, already!" That's how my head struggled with the facts. But the more we did it, of course, the more comfortable we became being Rosemary's parents.



My Mom and Dad drove up from Florida after Rosemary was unexpectedly born. Mom was able to stay Easter weekend, but she had to return back to work after that. Dad is retired, so he stayed with us the entire time I was in the hospital and even later. I was discharged after a week, but Rosemary was still in the NICU. It was strange.. I was discharged home without my baby. I am so grateful to both of my parents for being there for me when I was weak. Senpai, too, of course. But it would have been really hard if Dad hadn't stayed longer. He helped around the house, drove the 26 miles when I was too tired to do it myself, and kept me company while Senpai was at work. He was glad to help, but he was also happy when Rosemary finally came safely home, so he could return home, too. Thanks, Dad.

I pumped breastmilk to go into her tube, but her little body needed more nutrition than I could provide at first, and she was given formula as well. It was actually more like she was given formula plus the little bits of colostrum that I produced. I put my heart and soul into pumping, waking up every three hours even into the night, trying to rev up production. It wasn't until after I had been discharged home that my breasts finally produced enough milk so the NICU staff could feed her breast milk alone without formula. I was so thrilled to get to that point. I worked with a lactation consultant to try to breastfeed, too. One day I was trying to breastfeed Rosemary behind a screen when I could hear the doctor going over Rosemary's chart with the nurses. A male nurse relayed that Rosemary didn't tolerate formula well, and the doctor got the wrong idea, thinking that I was stopping giving her breast milk. The female doctor became all bullish all of a sudden, "Where's the mom? She's here?" and she poked her head over the screen, while I had my baby to my breast, and demanded to know why I wasn't breastfeeding. I just looked at her incredulously. It's humorous now. I'm glad they had Rosemary's best interests at heart.



Even though the breastmilk was there, getting her to ingest it for herself was a tall mountain to climb. She was born before her sucking reflex had developed. Every day the nurses, Senpai, and I would try to put a bottle in her mouth, just to have her mouth form an "o" from which she would poke her tiny little tongue out. It was the cutest thing in the world. I said, "That's adorable, Sweetie, but it's not going to help you eat." When she finally did learn to suck, it started as only one or two little sucks and then she would stop, mostly from exhaustion. The rest of the bottle had to go down her feeding tube. Gradually she started to drink more and more, still never finishing her bottle. She was just too short on strength and energy. When she had been there for 18 days, I finally broke down. When I got there I learned that the nurse that day had put an entire bottle down her tube, without even trying to get her to drink it. That was the standard procedure-- If a baby doesn't do well for one feeding, just tube feed the next-- but I was ready to punch her. They wouldn't send Rosemary home on a feeding tube, and she wouldn't be rid of the damn thing if they kept using it without even trying to get her to drink the milk for herself. I expressed my concerns to the nurse in the nicest way possible without actually punching her. She went and found the doctor-- a nice Asian fellow, not the bull woman from before-- and after hearing what happened he changed Rosemary's feeding schedule from every 3 hours to... whenever she was hungry.



This simple directive made an unbelievably profound difference. What a brilliant idea! Feed the baby when she's hungry! And, oh man, she ate SO WELL after that. It turned out that every 5 hours was her personal schedule. The NICU staff squirmed at that timeline, not really liking the idea of pushing feedings beyond 4 hours, but it was so good for her. She wasn't eating at 3 hours because she was still tired! She was supposed to be sleeping then according to her own schedule, but here were these nurses prodding her awake and forcing a bottle in her mouth, expecting her to chug it down. But when she was hungry, 5 hours later, she finished the whole bottle, every single one of them. She was discharged a day and a half later.

 

The Birth of The Cupcake

On Friday, March 26th I ate a large, late (9 pm) dinner, and I knew that it wouldn't let me sleep while it was still digesting. Heartburn hit, so at midnight Senpai went to bed and I stayed up. At 2 am I woke up Senpai with some alarming news, "We need to go to the hospital." A blue moon was on its way and contractions had started.

It had happened before: I had started contracting for 30 seconds out of every minute on Thursday, February 26th. On another full moon. You can’t tell me that’s not weird. The baby was 29 weeks old then. The cure at that time had been IV fluids because I must’ve been overly dehydrated. I am fully convinced that if I had not delivered Rosemary in March, contractions would have started up again on the next full moon in April.

We went to Belleville Memorial, the hospital in our area that I had planned to deliver at. A pelvic examination found me to be 2 cm dilated and 50% effaced. They injected me with one of two doses of a steroid to help baby's lungs develop, just in case. Since the pregnancy was only 33 weeks along though, by 11 am Belleville had put me in an ambulance to transfer us to St. Mary's Hospital in St. Louis, because they have a NICU. Once at St. Mary's, a team of doctors named Bulgar, Wheat, and Vlastos diagnosed me with something called HELLP Syndrome. Dr. Vlastos described it as two steps above pre-eclampsia. I was started on an IV drip of Magnesium Sulfate to act as a muscle relaxer for my uterus, and also to prevent the onset of seizures. It also made my skin hot and gave me double-vision. I was put in a small room (it had originally been a closet) with every intention of being watched for the next couple of weeks until I'd be more ready to deliver. Senpai and I buckled down for the waiting game it seemed like we'd play. I honestly hoped it wouldn’t be too long, though, because it was very hard to entertain myself by reading books or watching movies with blurry, double-vision. While at home we had been watching "Avatar: The Last Airbender." We were so very close to the end of the series and Senpai insisted we continue watching the DVDs in the hospital, but I could only get through an episode or two before my eyes gave up trying to focus. On Sunday morning I got the 2nd dose of steroids for Rosemary's lungs.

Sunday night, leading into Monday, I did not sleep a wink for thrashing around on the bed, moaning and screaming like a banshee. My liver felt like it was going to explode and there was nothing the nurse could do for me. The funny thing is that Senpai did not stay with me that night. He had called the nurse's station in the morning to ask how I was: "Oh, she's fine," was the answer, of course. I called him at work at 7 am with some different news, "Come! Now!" was pretty much what it boiled down to. I had hoped to catch him before he left for work that morning, but, in my pain and delirium, that did not happen.

On Monday morning the doctors all conferred and started up pitocin; the only cure for my pain was delivery. After the hellish night I’d just experienced I was in no mood to go through labor. I REALLY wanted a C-Section, against my better judgement, but my platelets and other clotting factors were not ideal for major surgery. If you look up HELLP Syndrome on Wikipedia, it’ll tell you that the most extreme classification is when the patient has a platelet count of less than 50,000; I got as low as 15,000. I was at a loss: I could barely suck in a full breath of air due to the liver pain, and they wanted me push a baby out?? Somehow it did get easier to breath, and I slept away the first labor pains in the new, large room they had moved me to; I was too exhausted to let those little contractions bother me. Later in the day, after I woke up for good, I moved over to a birthing ball, and that helped me through the rest of the contractions. My laptop was playing my soothing Tibetan Singing Bowl music. Senpai asked if he could turn on the TV. Ha ha, no.

Around dinnertime, at 6 cm dilation and 80% effaced, the doctors wanted to break my water. I knew once that happened things would start getting ugly, so I asked for Stadol. I couldn't have an epidural due to the steroids I was on, and I had psyched myself up throughout this pregnancy to not have one anyway, but I still wanted something to take the edge off. They broke my water (it was clear, yay!), I felt that first lousy contraction, and then they injected the Stadol into my IV line and I felt like Alice in Wonderland. It's hard to describe. It's not that I passed out, or went to a "happy place," but I drew away from the craziness and sucked on my reserves until I was needed... everything else just faded into the distance. The hard part was not pushing. Because Rosemary would need extra care once she was delivered, we had to wait for an operating room to be made ready for us, instead of just delivering in the room we were in. Once in the OR, Senpai said at least a dozen people were all gathered around the bed, waiting for the big show. Because I had not been given an epidural, exactly when to push was left up to me, which I very much appreciated. Little jokes were tossed around the peanut gallery between my efforts, but I barely noticed (Senpai said he had asked the docs, "So if you're all here, who's delivering the other babies?"). Each time I whispered, "Push," the nurses and Senpai had to convince me to tuck my chin to my chest; it was just so easy to let my head loll back against the bed. Finally, within only a half hour of pushing, Rosemary came forth. I felt her little body slide out of me with no pain whatsoever, only relief.

She was immediately taken to the other side of the room for close monitoring. It’s amazing how I was there, yet, through my position and exhaustion, I can’t exactly say I witnessed my baby being born. Senpai, wearing his blue scrubs, was able to go over and snap pictures (he tells me he cut the umbilical cord), while I still lay there with the doctors convincing me to deliver the placenta. I couldn’t pay attention to them because my heart was on the other side of the room. At the next contraction, it felt like someone actually grabbed the cord and ripped the placenta out of me. Whether or not that happened, I can’t say for sure, but it felt disturbing.



A nurse brought my baby over for me to see: she was bundled up tight in her wrappings, and all I saw was a red little face and lots of fuzzy hair under her stretchy hat. The nurse held her far enough away that I couldn't touch her. Within that short moment she was quickly whisked away to get settled into the NICU. Rosemary was delivered at 9:29 pm, and I didn’t get to touch her for the first time until 12:20 am. I was physically at the end of my rope, but, alone in the big room once again, I was determined to see my baby that night. After the nurses had checked me out and put me back together as best they could, I made them move me to a wheelchair and wheel me down the hall to NICU.

Rosemary was splayed under a heat lamp in a large, open bed. The bed was higher than my wheelchair; I had to raise my elbow over the edge of it to touch her. I don’t remember noticing it at the time, but in pictures of that night she had a breathing tube attached. We hadn’t been there for too long before I started to pass out in the wheelchair, and the nurses wheeled me back to my room. I’ll never forget the names of those wonderful ladies who took care of me that night: Susan and Yolanda.



The next morning, Tuesday, the day nurse learned of my intention to breastfeed. A breastpump was wheeled in and I was instructed in the use of it. From that point on, pumping 15 minutes every three hours would become part of my daily routine. I had trouble learning how to pee again. I was being pumped full of IV fluids, but my bladder didn’t want to empty on its own; my body was swollen as all heck. I was given a shot of something called Lasiks that helped me go again. Since the baby had been delivered, the doctors took me off the steroids they had used to raise my platelet count. That night I once again experienced the excruciating liver pain. Susan and Yolanda were at my bedside as I whimpered, "10! 10! 10!" This time they could give me morphine. The morphine melted the pain away within seconds, but it also disappeared after what seemed like only a minute; I was surprised at how quickly it wore off. They gave me two doses of morphine, then one dose of some other painkiller, before deciding to start the steroids again. The pain went away and I was able to mercifully sleep.

I was still in that big room in the Labor & Delivery ward. Every time a new day nurse took over my case, she was always surprised that I had delivered already. I was kept in that room sleeping, pumping, eating, and getting shot full of steroids until Friday when my platelet levels were finally good enough for my care to be downgraded. I was moved to a smaller room in the post-partem section. I had been with Rosemary in the NICU when my stuff was moved, so I had to call Senpai at work and beg him to come back to the hospital to help get the room together. The way I said it, "Everything is confused!" I was still very exhausted and it was hard for me to move around with the IV cords. Senpai quickly made the trip over and plugged in the breastpump, organized my pumping supplies, plugged in my laptop, put toiletries in the bathroom, and stowed other miscellenea into drawers. I have a hard time believing now that I couldn't do those simple tasks myself, but that just goes to show what sorry shape I was in.

I gradually grew stronger, and then I was discharged on Easter Sunday. Without her.


So that was Rosemary’s birth. Her stay in the NICU is another story.